2 PhD positions on Software Security

Sort on published: 2018-06-13

Uppsala University is a comprehensive research-intensive university with a strong international standing. Our mission is to pursue top-quality research and education and to interact constructively with society. Our most important assets are all the individuals whose curiosity and dedication make Uppsala University one of Sweden’s most exciting workplaces. Uppsala University has 42,000 students, 7,000 employees and a turnover of SEK 6.7 billion.

The Department of Information Technology has a leading position in research and education. The Department currently has about 280 employees, including 120 teachers and 110 PhD students. More than 4000 students study one or more courses at the department each year. More info: http://www.it.uu.se.

Subject area and Duties: The topic for the PhD positions is to develop techniques for detecting and removing security vulnerabilities in software, and applying these techniques in software for IoT devices and for the Web. Since vulnerabilities in such software can lead to huge damages when exploited (e.g., through XSS attacks to obtain confidential information, or by taking over vulnerable IoT devices to form botnets), it is important that software components are bug-free and correctly implement security services.

Techniques that the positions will focus on include program analysis, verification, symbolic execution, testing using fuzzing, taint analysis, model learning; supported by constraint solving and SMT. Among the goals is to significantly extend the power and scalability of such techniques to real-world code bases; in particular, to analyse the widely-used Contiki OS for IoT, and to efficiently and precisely analyse JavaScript code implementing client-side or server-side functionality.

The position is for a maximum of five years and includes departmental duties at a level of at most 20%(typically teaching) as well as taking graduate courses.

Research environment: The positions are funded by recent five-year grants from SSF (the Foundation for Strategic Research) that bring together several research groups at Uppsala University (Bengt Jonsson, Parosh Abdulla, Mohammed Faouzi Atig, Philipp Ruemmer, Kostis Sagonas, Wang Yi) that are world-renowned in the fields of automated verification, programming language implementation, and testing.

Contributions include the UPPAAL model checker, high-impact techniques and tools for testing and verification of multithreaded software, including Concuerror and Nidhugg, and the native-code compiler and several tools for the Erlang programming language. Members received the CAV (Computer-Aided Verification) Award, the most prestigious academic award in the area, both in 2013 (Wang Yi) and in 2017 (Parosh Abdulla and Bengt Jonsson). The work is performed in collaboration with partners at RISE SICS (Luca Mottola, Shahid Raza, Thiemo Voigt) including developers of the ConTiki OS, and the SICS Security lab, and the language-based security group at Chalmers (Andrei Sabelfeld).

Qualifications: The candidate should have a Master of Science in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or equivalent, in a field which is relevant for the work. It is helpful to have a good background in some of the fields program analysis, compiler techniques, model checking, formal verification, testing, security, software engineering, and similar, as well as to be proficient in implementing non-trivial algorithms. We expect the candidate to be fluent in verbal and written English.

The candidate will be expected to teach in English or Swedish. Strong skills in spoken and written English are required.

How to apply: The application should include a statement of purpose, motivating preferred research directions. The application should further include a description of past experience, a CV, copies of exams, degrees and grades, a copy of Master thesis (or a draft thereof), relevant publications, and other relevant documents. The candidates should indicate the earliest feasible starting date of employment and are encouraged to provide letter(s) of recommendation and contact information to reference persons.

Uppsala University strives to be an inclusive workplace that promotes equal opportunities and attracts qualified candidates who can contribute to the University’s excellence and diversity. We welcome applications from all sections of the community and from people of all backgrounds.

Are you considering moving to Sweden to work at Uppsala University? If so, you will find a lot of information about working and living in Sweden at www.uu.se/joinus. You are also welcome to contact International Faculty and Staff Services at mailto:ifss@uadm.uu.se.

Please do not send offers of recruitment or advertising services. Applications must be submitted as described in this advertisement.

Placement:
Department of Information Technology

Type of employment:
Full time
, Temporary position longer than 6 months